CHAPTER 43: THE HOLE IN THE HISTORY
Hughie's workstation looked like a conspiracy theorist's fever dream.
Three monitors arranged in a semicircle, each one covered with browser tabs, image analysis windows, and timeline comparisons. Sticky notes clustered around the edges with dates, names, and question marks. Red string connected printouts tacked to a corkboard behind him—the kind of visual that usually meant someone had lost their grip on reality.
Except Hughie hadn't lost anything. He'd found it.
"Look at this," he said, pulling up a graph on the center monitor. "Stormfront's social media presence. X-axis is time, Y-axis is engagement metrics." The line started at zero three months ago, then shot upward in a curve that looked almost artificial. "See how smooth it is? Real organic growth is messy—spikes and dips based on what you post, when you post it, news cycles, all that. This is too clean."
"Could be good management," I said, even though I knew better. "Vought has resources."
"That's what I thought at first." Hughie clicked to another tab—spreadsheets of data that made my eyes cross. "But then I looked at her follower base. The accounts that followed her first—the 'early adopters'—have engagement patterns that don't match real human behavior. They liked posts within seconds of upload, they commented in generic phrases, and most of them went dormant after her numbers got high enough to sustain themselves organically."
"Bots."
"Sophisticated bots. But bots." He leaned back in his chair. "Someone spent serious money building her audience before she even went public. The 'organic grassroots support'? It's astroturf all the way down."
Frenchie wandered over from his workbench, wiping something chemical from his hands. "This proves she is manufactured. It does not prove she is dangerous."
"That's the thing." Hughie pulled up another window—this one showing search results, or rather, the absence of them. "I can't find her before this. Like, at all. No college records, no hometown newspaper mentions, no social security trail. Nothing. It's not that her past is hidden—it doesn't exist."
The opening I'd been waiting for.
"What if she's not new?" I said carefully, steering without pushing. "What if she's old—someone who's been around before under a different name?"
Hughie's eyes widened. Frenchie stopped wiping his hands.
"You think she's a legacy identity?" Hughie asked.
"I think someone who builds a fake history from scratch might be covering up a real one. Vought's been around since World War II. They've had Supes operating under different names, different brands, for decades. What if Stormfront isn't her first tour?"
The silence in the safehouse stretched for several seconds. Then Frenchie moved to his laptop and started typing.
"I have access to some corrupted Vought personnel archives," he said. "Old files, poorly digitized, from before they cleaned up their databases. If she existed under another name..."
"Start with the 70s and 80s," I suggested. "Before social media made it hard to disappear."
"Because that's when Liberty was active," I didn't add. "Because I watched it happen on a TV show in another life."
The V-incident call came in three hours later.
Bronx. Compound V psychotic break—a teenager who'd gotten hold of street-level V and couldn't control the strength surge. FDNY was on scene but couldn't get close. The kid was throwing cars.
I'd spent the past week building something new: a street-level response team. Six volunteers, no powers, just first-aid training and body cameras. Dennis, the retired firefighter, had organized the training sessions. Maria, whose daughter had been hurt in Midtown, handled logistics. The others were people who'd shown up to the charity event and asked how they could help.
"The Mythmaker doesn't just stand up," I'd told them. "He teaches others to."
Now it was time to see if that was true.
We arrived twelve minutes after the call, parking our borrowed van two blocks back from the chaos. The kid—maybe sixteen, terrified—had already flipped three cars and put a firefighter through a storefront window. His eyes were wild, pupils blown, muscles twitching with uncontrolled V-enhanced strength.
"Stay back," I told the team. "Body cameras on. Document everything. If I go down, get the footage to the news."
"Harley—" Dennis started.
"I'm the only one here who can take a hit from a V-user." I pulled on the kinetic gloves, felt their familiar weight settle around my hands. "Stay back. Help anyone who gets clear."
I walked toward the chaos.
[PERFORMANCE CONDITIONS: 3 ACTIVE]
[WITNESSES: 47 | RECORDING DEVICES: 12 | RECOGNIZED PERSONA: ACTIVE]
[AMPLIFICATION: 2.0x]
The kid saw me coming. His face twisted with fear and rage—the cocktail of emotions that came with V-overload, the sense that the world was attacking and fighting back was the only option.
"Hey," I said, keeping my voice calm. "I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help."
"STAY BACK!"
He threw a car door at me. I ducked—barely—and felt the wind of its passage ruffle my hair.
"I know what you're going through," I continued, moving closer. "The V makes everything feel like too much. The strength, the emotions, all of it. But you can control it. You just need to focus on one thing at a time."
This was the same approach I'd used with Tyler in Hunts Point, months ago. Talk them down. Make them feel seen. Give them something to hold onto besides the rage.
The kid's hands were shaking. His eyes darted between me and the firefighters, calculating threats.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"...Marcus."
"Marcus. Good. I'm Harley." I stopped ten feet away, hands visible, no sudden movements. "You took something you weren't ready for. That's not your fault—nobody should be able to buy this stuff on the street. But what happens next? That's on you. You can keep fighting until someone puts you down. Or you can sit down with me and let the medics help."
The silence stretched. The twitching in his muscles started to slow.
"I didn't mean to hurt anyone," Marcus said, his voice cracking.
"I know. Sit down, Marcus. It's going to be okay."
He sat.
[V-INCIDENT RESOLVED: COOPERATIVE SURRENDER]
[SEED ACTIVATED: "UNDERSTANDS V-USERS" — 2,800 → 3,200 BELIEVERS]
[NEW NARRATIVE: "TEACHES OTHERS TO STAND UP"]
[BP GENERATION: +180 (EVENT BONUS)]
The footage hit the feeds within an hour. The Mythmaker response team, helping clear debris while I talked down a V-kid. Unglamorous. Genuine. The exact opposite of Stormfront's polished snark.
Dennis found me afterward, his face a complicated mix of relief and something else.
"Thank you," he said. "For giving us something to do besides feel helpless."
I added his name to the mental list of people I was responsible for.
The list was getting long.
That night, I invested in the future.
[BP INVESTED: 500]
[MIGHT: SUB-VALUE 92 → 100]
[MIGHT RANK: 0 → 1]
The change was subtle but real. When I gripped my apartment's doorframe, it felt different—not lighter exactly, but more responsive. Like my body had finally caught up to what the system said it should be capable of. Peak-human strength as a baseline, with the crystallized Rank 0 power layered on top.
Three Rank 1 stats now. Might. Fortitude. Presence.
"Still low-tier," I reminded myself. "Still vulnerable to any real Supe. But less vulnerable than yesterday."
My phone buzzed. Frenchie.
Frenchie: Found something. Personnel photo, 1972. Blonde woman in military dress. Name field: "Liberty." Come see.
I grabbed my jacket.
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